Nonwoven laying devices for forming a multilayered nonwoven on a discharge belt are known from practice, wherein the nonwoven laying unit lays formed web being fed continuously in mutually overlapping layers on the discharge belt. Such a laying device is designed as a nonwoven laying device, wherein the discharge belt is moving during the laying of the formed web, with the consequence that the laid formed web layers show mutually crossing oblique alignments with layer formation in a zigzag pattern. The fibers may have a prevailing alignment in the formed web being fed, and they have, e.g., a prevailing direction component in the longitudinal extension and direction of run of the formed web being fed. These fiber orientations cross each other in the nonwoven, and the crossing angle is an obtuse angle greater than 90° because of the narrow closure of the layers.
It is known from U.S. Pat. No. 5,476,703 A that this crossing angle of the fiber orientations and also of the longitudinal extension of the laid formed web layers can be changed by a stretching means arranged downstream of the nonwoven laying device, which stretches the nonwoven and reduces the crossing angle in the process.
It is, furthermore, known from U.S. Pat. No. 5,454,145 A that the stretched nonwoven can be fed to another nonwoven laying device and another, new nonwoven material with multiply crossed fiber orientation can be formed on the discharge belt thereof by laying in a zigzag and scale-like pattern.